AFC-Holcroft received an order from a global automotive supplier of systems and components for a roller-hearth annealing furnace. The equipment will be installed in the southeast region of the U.S., where the same facility has been running production using two Holcroft-brand roller-hearth annealers since the late 1990s. The new furnace will be similar to the existing installation in design, but it will be updated with modern control systems and features.

The roller-hearth design offers the customer more flexibility than other types of thermal-processing technology. It can produce a larger volume of parts, change recipes easily, provide long cycle times, and offer the flexibility of batch-style processing in a continuous-type design.

According to AFC-Holcroft, the customer provided vital feedback on areas of potential improvement, which allowed the furnace manufacturer to combine the known functionality of the existing design with identified areas of improvement based on decades of in-plant experience.